


I Know You

by HomeForImaginaryFriends



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, M/M, Magic, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 12:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13236099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomeForImaginaryFriends/pseuds/HomeForImaginaryFriends
Summary: Kuroo attempts to help an injured dragon, who is not what he appears to be.





	I Know You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kath (KathWolfie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathWolfie/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Kath!
> 
> I stole this from your Secret Santa wishlist, hopefully this is high-fantasy. I had to look it up and it sounded like my jam, basically dungeons&dragons mixed with Haikyuu. I just wanted to say thank you for supporting my stories and just in general being an awesome person! I hope you have a great year.

“No.”  Kuroo backed away from the steel door, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste.  Kuroo was known for his agile grace, he simply didn’t trip over his own feet.  But this, what they had shown him, made him want to run.  “What have you done?  And how do you expect me to help?”  The questions were fair, if a bit harsh.  Kuroo had enough messes of his own to clean up without adding those of another land onto the pile.  Only the fact that he owed Oikawa a favor kept him standing there instead of opening a portal right back home.

 

“It was an accident, Kindaichi thought it was a Wyvern.”  Iwaizumi bit out, as if challenging Kuroo to say a bad word towards his charge.  On any other day Kuroo might tease the warrior relentlessly, but not today.  Not concerning this problem.

 

Wyvern were dangerous.  They attacked anything that moved and devastated villages and cities alike.  They were hellaciously hard to take down and only flew into rages when injured.  Kuroo didn’t blame the young warrior Kindaichi for trying to shoot down a Wyvern.  Though he did sort of blame him for mistaken a Wyvern for a bloody Night Dragon.

 

Injuring a dragon alone would be cause for alarm.  But the creatures were usually intelligent and forgiving, given some grovelling and tributes.  Night Dragons were in a classification all their own, holding none of the similarities of the intelligent creatures who stuck mostly to uninhabited mountains.

 

It certainly did not help that only one group of people were brave, or stupid, enough to ride with Night Dragons.  They did not interact with other lands, preferring to stay deep within their own countryside.  There have been those who have tried to attack and move into their lands.  Those few did not live long after setting foot onto the darkened lands.

 

Kuroo had studied the old scrolls.  Karasuno had once been a thriving land, full of growing cities and sprawling countryside.  The scrolls tell of them suddenly closing up their borders and retreating far into the deep forests.  Kuroo could read between the lines, he saw that they didn’t do this for nothing.  Night Dragons were fierce beasts and every inch of them was incredibly valuable.  Most likely Karasuno had a few too many people killing their kin and had done what they had to to protect themselves.

 

It certainly was not good that Seijoh now had a Night Dragon deep within the belly of their castle.

 

“And what do you expect me to do about it?”  Kuroo asked, though he already had a good idea.

 

“We cannot go in there to treat its wound, we need you to calm the beast.”  Oikawa answered, arms crossed over his chest and looking like he was ready to argue all night with Kuroo if he had to.  Kuroo owed Oikawa a debt, that was true, but he didn’t owe the other man his life.

 

“I am not a Beast Tamer, you have better luck asking your Kyoutani.”  Kuroo dismissed Oikawa’s request with a wave of his hand.  Just because Kuroo could turn into a beast did not mean he could communicate or control them.  He would have to be a complete moron to listen to the Oikawa, which was slightly insulting.  Oikawa knew he wasn’t an idiot.

 

“Kyoutani is protecting my brother while he travels, they would not be able to make it back here in a reasonable time and I have been told the wound has been left too long and has begun to fester.”  Oikawa explained.  Yahaba was only Oikawa’s half brother, a bastard child.  Under any other circumstances Yahaba would have been free to roam without protection, but too many knew of Oikawa’s adoration for his younger half sibling.

 

“And if the creature kills me then you are off the hook considering you did not send one of your own people to be eaten.”  Kuroo leaned against his staff.  A twisted old thing that followed him around and showed up whenever it wished to.

 

“Precisely.”  Oikawa gave one of his sweet smiles that had absolutely no effect on Kuroo any longer.  “You are the only one I knew who has interacted with Karasuno.”

 

Kuroo had the unique ability to teleport places without first seeing where he needed to go, as most of that type of magic required.  When he was but a young lad his mother had fallen ill.  A sorcerer had promised help, but he required one thing.  A Night Dragon scale.  Kuroo had been small and he had the ability to move from one place to another with only a thought.  It should be easy for him, the sorcerer had promised.  In and out before anyone even saw him.

 

Of course it didn’t work out that way.  Kuroo had almost been gutted by the Night Dragon he had tried to steal a scale from.  The sorcerer had forgotten to inform him that scales simply do not pull right off, and he had made an enemy of a creature that even Wyverns feared.

 

While hiding it was then that Kuroo had met a boy around his age.  Small with wide eyes and a smile with several missing teeth, the boy had listened to why Kuroo needed the scale.  Kuroo had been hiding at the time, he wasn’t sure how the boy had found him.  He hadn’t seemed angry or upset, just asked Kuroo why he was trying to hurt the dragon.  The boy had disappeared once he got his answer and Kuroo had shivered in the cold.  He was too scared to try and teleport again, which needed a clear mind or else he might end up in a worse place.

 

The boy had appeared with a scale that was bigger than Kuroo’s hand.  His hands had been warm as he passed over the scale.  He had flashed that missing-teeth smile before disappearing into the shadows.

 

The sorcerer ended up being a lying lowlife.  He had poisoned Kuroo’s mother because he knew of Kuroo’s abilities.  He had wanted the scale for himself.  Kuroo had been too young and inexperienced to do anything back then, but years later he had tracked down that sorcerer.

 

“I’m never drinking with you again.”  Kuroo scowled because he had told Oikawa that story after they had gotten drunk in a pub.

 

“Deal.”  Oikawa tossed the latch on the steel door.  Kuroo could back out but damn Oikawa, he was curious.

 

Kuroo edged cautiously into the huge dungeon room.  The door was steel but the walls were stone.  There was a bigger stone door behind the Night Dragon that led to a long hall, a way that slowly crept up towards the surface.  They must have pulled the dragon down through that entrance.

 

The Night Dragon was as large as he remembered as a child, perhaps this one was even larger.  Surely it was broad, much bigger than a horse and therefore several times bigger than Kuroo.  It’s scales were pitch black in the dim lighting.  The scales on its neck and back were so big they nearly seemed like overlapping plates, like armor.  Two large horns sprouted from the top of its head, looking as deadly as the smaller ones on its face and along its spine.

 

The large head of the dragon moved slowly towards Kuroo, it’s slitted pupils blown wide from either the dark or pain, perhaps both.  Now in the room Kuroo could clearly smell rot, a festering wound left untreated for too long.  The creature took slow, deep breaths, its chest moving with the rhythm of it.

 

“Hello, I’ve not come to harm you.”  Kuroo promised, hands outstretched.  His staff had remained outside the cell, bloody useless coward.  The dragon watched him, too much intensity in those dark eyes.  Too much intelligence and cunning.

 

Kuroo thought of the legends of other dragons.  Perhaps the stories surrounding the Night Dragons were false.

 

“I think you may understand me,” Kuroo started slowly.  “And if you can then I want you to know I had nothing to do with all of this.”  Kuroo motioned around the cell, encompassing the dragons wound and him being locked up.

 

The dragon lifted its head and moved before Kuroo could even draw a breath.  Smoke poured out of the creatures nostrils.  It was warm and didn’t smell wonderful, but it didn’t hurt.  It didn’t stop Kuroo from falling backwards onto his own rump from surprise.

 

A deep, almost wheezing sound came from the dragon.

 

“Are you-” Kuroo scrambled to a standing position as he waved his hand to clear the smoke.  “Are you _laughing_ at me?”  Kuroo let out a laugh of his own, though he was slightly insulted that a Night Dragon was laughing at him in the first place.

 

Intense, intelligent, and cunning were the first thoughts that came to Kuroo’s mind when he saw the dragon for the first time.  Mischievous and kind of an arsehole were the second thoughts.

 

“If you can understand why haven’t you let them help you?”  Kuroo asked.  The dragon placed his head back onto his claw-tipped paws.  He looked as if that little joke had taken all the energy out of him.  His large eyes looked around the room before he tilted his head towards his wound.  “Ah.”  Kuroo said intelligently.

 

Why would the creature trust those who shot him out of the sky and then locked him away deep underground?  Unlikely anyone else had tried simply talking to the creature.  Seijoh had Drakes, wingless dragonkin who were much more like overgrown dogs than anything else.

 

“I’m going to take a look at your wound, I won’t touch it.”  The dragon watched him but did not move as Kuroo made his way towards the dragons flank.  The Night Dragon lifted a large wing, showing Kuroo the sizable chunk the catapult had taken out of them.

 

“They have a healer here, they’ll most likely have to cut away at the infected skin.”  Kuroo winced in sympathy.  There were those who could use magic to heal, but they mostly healed human wounds.

 

The dragon’s muzzle shifted, revealing a row of sharp teeth.  Clearly they did not agree with that assessment.  Kuroo thought he might be a little off because despite the terrifying display of fangs that could rip him apart with no effort, he noticed a missing spot on the top row.

 

“No one here knows how to heal Dragons.”  Kuroo argued.  The dragon looked at the door before blowing smoke once again.  Intelligent eyes turned back to Kuroo who got the message.

 

The Night Dragon did not want an audience.  He was smart enough to know they were being watched.

 

Kuroo drew his magic to himself, his staff sliding warm under his weaving hands.  Cloaking spells were easy enough.  Oikawa could break it, but it would take him a while to do so.

 

Black mist swirled around the dragon.  With no more fanfare than that, where once a Night Dragon rested was a man.

 

Suddenly Kuroo understood why Karasuno had closed themselves off from the rest of the world when the Night Dragons started to be attacked and pulled apart because of their monetary value.  They were not pets nor companions.  The Night Dragons were Karasuno.

 

“No cutting.”  The man cringed as he sat up.  Kuroo kept his eyes firmly on the other mans face and not his bare- everything.  He had been stunning as a dragon, terrifying and almost too large for the cavernous dungeon cell.  As a man?  He was still stunning, though thankfully smaller.

 

“Why would you trust me?”  Kuroo asked, letting his staff stand on his own before pulling his cloak off to cover the man.  He had to kneel next to him to do so and he allowed himself to look over the wound, refused to look at the smooth and toned skin surrounding it.  The wound took out a chunk of his side and Kuroo could see the grayish-green peeling skin near the top where the infection was spreading.

 

“I know you.”  Kuroo looked up in surprise.  The man's voice was deep, unknown to Kuroo who had an ear for tones and languages.  “The boy who risked everything for his mother.”  He smiled, a singular missing tooth amongst white teeth that were thankfully blunt and not pointed like his other forms.

 

“You’re the boy who brought me the scale.”  Kuroo heard a commotion from outside of the cell.  He made a split second decision.  “I can take you to someone who can heal you.”  He held out his hand, letting the other man make the choice.

 

Soft brown eyes that appeared almost black in the dark cell stared down at Kuroo’s offered hand.

 

“Lord Oikawa will be furious.”  The man said, portraying that he knew much more than he let on.  He grinned up at Tetsurou, sliding his hand into Kuroo’s and taking a firm hold.  Mischievous, Kuroo had been right about that one.

 

Just as the door opened Kuroo teleported himself and the dragon-turned-man to his own home.  Kuroo thought he would get along just fine with his own mischievous family.


End file.
